Kurt Tucholsky - a Degenerate Democrat in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany

Kurt Tucholsky quote #2







Lord God! If you’re really up there as we’ve been taught
Come down from Heaven or send your son.
Tear off the banners, the helmets and the medals
And tell the nations of the earth how we’ve suffered,
How we were wiped out by hunger, lice, shrapnel, and lies.
In your name, the preachers have led us to our graves.
Come down now and explain why they lied. 
Those of us who have knees are kneeling before you. Listen to us.
Drive us back under the ground, but first give us an answer.

In 1918, he returned to Berlin, where he witnessed the discussions surrounding the Versailles Treaty, mass demonstrations, and the political radicalization that followed the war. He was upset by the political climate in the country, the political murders that took place, and the resurgence of reactionary forces. For a short time, however, the adaptable Tucholsky took a job as an editor at a right-wing propaganda newspaper. He later wrote for the communist publication, Arbeiter Illustrierter Zeitung (Workers' Illustrated Newspaper). But he remained a republican and a democrat and sensed the dangers of that period and the fascist threat that was just beginning to appear on the horizon. In 1931 he would write a sentence in a glossy text which has continued to provoke controversy over the decades: "Soldiers are murderers." The editor-in-chief, Carl von Ossietzky, was charged but found not guilty of "slandering the Reichswehr." In the German Republic, the sentence - modified in various ways over the years - caused juristic ructions all the way up to the level of the Federal Constitutional Court 65 years after it was published. 

Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of the Weimar Republic. As a politically engaged journalist and temporary co-editor of the weekly magazine Die Weltbühne he proved himself to be a social critic in the tradition of Heinrich Heine. He was simultaneously a satirist, an author of satirical political revues, a songwriter and a poet. He saw himself as a left-wing democrat and pacifist and warned against anti-democratic tendencies – above all in politics, the military and justice – and the threat of National Socialism. His fears were confirmed when the Nazis came to power in 1933:His books were listed on the Nazi's censorship as "Entartete Kunst" ("Degenerate Art") and burned, and he lost his German citizenship.






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